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18. Religion
- University of Hawai'i Press
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214 What is “Oceanic religion”? Until recently many scholars restricted the term to the religions of Pacific Islanders as they existed before extensive European contact. They wrote of mission Christianity as an intrusive force and sought to explain a variety of postcontact religious movements as indigenous responses to colonialism. Today, with Christianity entrenched across the region, a sharp distinction between indigenous and foreign religions is no longer viable. For most Pacific Islanders, the religion of the present is a complex and ever-changing mix of local and imported elements. In some cases, especially where missionaries have only recently been at work, the “traditional” and “Christian” may be readily distinguished (Knauft 2002; Robbins 2004). More often one encounters situations such as on Ujelang in the Marshall Islands (Carucci 1997). The people of this isolated atoll dedicate four months each year to competitive singing, dances and games, and feasts. The ritual season climaxes on December 25 and the first Sunday of the new year. On these days the community lavishes food upon their minister, whom they expect, as with the chiefs of old, to keep some for his own use and redistribute the rest among the congregation . Laurence Carucci shows that the Ujelang way of celebrating Christmas parallels pre-Christian rituals meant to assure prosperity . But this Christmas celebration also incorporates and speaks to the Ujelang people’s experience of successive colonial regimes, of displacements during the Second World War and nuclear testing years, of a commitment to Congregational Christianity, and of a desire to be culturally distinct within Micronesia. Christmas on Ujelang turns out to be about a lot of things. Such mixings and fusions are common across the Pacific Islands (Figure 18.1). On the surface at least they reflect the inroads made by Western ideas and practices upon Oceanic cultures . At a deeper level, however, they are the living productions of a profoundly experiential and flexible appreciation of the spiritual that long predates the exploration and conquest of the region by Europeans. Spectacular instances of religious transformation in indigenous religious practices are well known. Many New Guinea people, for instance, traded magic, mythologies, and even whole ritual complexes with their neighbors (Harrison 1993). From premissionary Hawai‘i we have the fascinating example of Queen Ka‘ahumanu, who in 1819 instigated the overthrow of the elaborate system of ritual prohibitions that had previously separated men from women, nobles from commoners (Howe 1984: 163–168). Early observers often portrayed islanders as slaves to unchanging customs. This stereotype suited the colonial project (see Thomas 1994). More careful historical and ethnographic work, however, has revealed the highly innovative, often performative quality of Oceanic religions (e.g., Schieffelin 1976; Wagner 1972). Paradoxically , this very openness has allowed many aspects of older indigenous religions to continue into the present, insinuated into Christian forms and more visibly syncretic religious movements such as the famed Melanesian “cargo cults.” There is no aspect of Oceania more difficult to generalize about than religion. In part, this has to do with the cultural diversity, the mix of historical influences, and the inventiveness of local religious expressions across the region. But it also has to do with the extraordinary attention outsiders have paid to Oceanic religion over the years. Turn to any standard regional bibliography and you will find hundreds of articles and books dealing with religion (e.g., Fry and Maurico 1987; Haynes and Wuerch 1995; Taylor 1965). There is a staggering amount of detailed information on virtually every aspect of religion from every corner of this vast region, yet there have been few published overviews of religion in Oceania. The most comprehensive is an essay by Garry Trompf, the pre-eminent scholar of Oceanic religions today, which surveys traditional religions, “cults of intrusion,” and Christianity and provides a useful annotated bibliography (Swain and Trompf 1995). Excellent entries on Micronesian, Melanesian, Polynesian , and Oceanic religions, as well as a historic overview of religious scholarship in the region, can be found in Mircea Eliade’s Encyclopedia of Religion (Eliade 1987). John Garrett (1982, 1992, 1997) has written the most comprehensive history of missionary efforts and the establishment of national churches. Manfred Ernst (1994, 18 Religion John Barker Figure 18.1. Atiu island woman, dancing in church during New Year celebration (photo MR). Religion ■ 215 2006) and his colleagues have provided comprehensive surveys of organized religion on a country-by-country basis. Several fine surveys of millenarian movements exist, mostly focused upon Melanesian cargo cults (Burridge 1969; Worsley 1968). Finally, mention should...